


The Other Daughter of Twilight

by Anna_Wing



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2019-11-23 19:00:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18155786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Wing/pseuds/Anna_Wing
Summary: The vicissitudes of life as a minion of Morgoth...





	1. Beginnings

It took her a long time to find her way home. 

The Lord left her behind in the East to do His work, overseeing the foundation of His great project there. It was a mighty task, in both conception and execution, and she was proud to be His chosen viceroy. The new Children pleased her. Their blood was sweet and their minds were weak; food and amusement together, which was elegant and economical. She thought that they would be useful subjects, in time; they learned so swiftly to fear the dark.

But there had been no warning from the Lord before he left the East of the new and terrible Lights that would attend the coming of Men. The first had been unpleasant, a white, sharp glare where before there had been only the peaceful dark and the uncaring stars. But the second...she had barely managed to find shelter, in that first moment when the Power that guided the Light saw her, and struck at her with hate and cruel fire. She had fallen more than flown to the thin shade of a rocky crevice, screaming in pain and horror. And then she had spent endless hours cowering behind the fragile shield of her wings, in terror that the Light would never fade, that she would be trapped until her shaping-cloak failed and she was flung naked to the winds and the withering radiance. Even after the enemy light faded, the passing hours became a nightmare of apprehension and uncertainty, until at last she learned the changing rhythm of the Lights. Little by little she eased the fear and the pain by sharing them with the new Children, but the joy was less, and in the end she onlt endured, night after night, until the blessed summons came to return home.

Her flight East had been clean and easy, riding the high winds under the distant stars, sheltered in the shadow of the Lord’s mighty presence. The journey home was slow and halting, and haunted by time. She learned to bear the lesser Light; it burned but did not altogether banish the night. But she could not endure the greater; her cloak frayed and thinned beneath Its fire, and Its touch was worse agony than the anger of the Lord. During Its time in the sky she could only hide, and wait. It was unspeakable relief to reach the Thangorodrim and flutter down, down, into the welcoming darkness. 

There was a pattern for the captains of Angband to follow, when returning from errantry. She paid homage where she owed it, extracted that due to her, slew the lesser Flyers that had had the temerity to usurp her favoured roost, and heard the news. Much had happened since her departure. More of the older Children had come back from over the Sea, pursuing the Lord. Or perhaps, pursuing the new jewels that He wore, set into His crown. She feared and hated those jewels, from the moment that she found their terrible light burning, where before there had only been cool darkness and the captive light of the forge. Even the Lights that had usurped the sky were not worse than that deadly triple fire. The jewels were dimmed in the black depth of the Lord’s hall, but still they were bright enough to hurt her when she came into His presence. He knew, and it amused Him to keep her there often, dancing attendance upon Him and upon His captive. 

The captive was mildly interesting. A prince of the older Children, trapped in its own treachery. There was some sort of Doom upon it, apparently, involving the jewels. By their pale light, the Lord let the Orcs dance their dances of pain with it before His own Throne. They painted it with its own blood, and made its screams part of their music in His praise. She listened and admitted that the older Children were tougher by far than the younger. The Orcs mocked it for what they thought was its weakness, but which she thought remarkable wisdom, for one of its kind. It did not waste its strength fruitlessly pursuing silence, but hoarded its self for more important things. She listened while the Orcs played, many times, and thought that at the end, it was no less itself than it had been at the beginning.

She was sent on other errands, to spy out the doings of the newcomers. The Noldor, the Lord said they called themselves, “the Wise”. That caused general amusement in the depths and much laboured wordplay. She listened, according to her habit, and then went out again, stretching her wings into the wide night. As the Lord’s lesser spies had reported, she found them, the Wise and the Cantankerous, encamped in two quarrelling hosts by the great lake in the south-west. She drew its mists around herself, and listened again, and learned.

When at last she returned to Angband, the Lord had a new decoration hanging by one wrist upon His walls.


	2. A Theme is Propounded

Not even the mightiest of the Children could have endured unaided what had been done here. She folded her wings, hooked herself to a convenient spur of rock nearby, and examined the Lord’s work with interest. The part of her that was not flesh, and never meant to be in flesh, perceived the Lord’s power holding the Child secure where it hung upon the rock. The spell twined through its substance like wires of darkness, binding body and spirit to each other and to the cliff, sustaining life and the torment of life. This was complex, careful art, done with the force and skill that the Lord showed forth in all His works, and she spent some time admiring its intricacies.

After a while, she noticed that the Child was awake. She sharpened her attention, curious to know how it was enduring this new test. _Fëar_ embodied, whether of the elder Children or the younger, were not readily penetrable to such as she. It was perhaps the other side of that weakness that allowed spirit to be swayed by threat or promise to flesh. The Lord had always refused to say; in her inmost thought she suspected that He did not know.

. . . . .

He had been awake since they had taken him, years on end. The Enemy’s power was his sleep now, his air and food and water and life, pain the substance in which his being endured. He no longer remembered his name, or his nature, or anything of himself, beyond the knowledge that he was, and that he suffered. The Enemy’s spell was subtle and strong; his agony was eased to a bearable degree, holding him forever wakeful and aware, unable to escape into madness. 

Then there came a change in his world. A presence that was not himself, and not pain. A cold, curious touch - nor could he any longer distinguish between touch of body and touch of mind - that wound itself into the red tangle of self and pain and cutting stone. It was a cautious touch, but even that little was enough to rouse the spells that held him. He made the sound that had been a scream once, long ago when he still had a voice, and struck out wildly, unaware of what he did, twisting and thrashing at the acid-burn of agony that ran through every nerve and sinew beneath his skin.

. . . . .

The Child’s sudden response took her by surprise. When its free arm flailed at her, from whatever intuition of her bodily presence it yet possessed, she struck back unthinkingly, iron claws scoring deep into its wasted flesh. It made that strange, grating sound again, jerking away where it swung from the cliff like a spider’s dinner. Its blood gathered in its wounds and fell in warm droplets into the chill air. She shrieked in pure horror at what she had done, not heeding the sudden, sweet scent of blood newly shed. To interfere with the Lord’s own prey without His express order would bring unspeakable punishment at His own hand. The Child was weak; even so small an injury might let it slip its bonds and body and escape. Orcs at least were mortal and their pain could not last beyond their lives. Even the Elder Children had limits to what they might endure. For such as she, torment could truly be unending. 

Reckless with terror, she flung her power into the Lord’s web, shaping her Song to heal the torn flesh, and then to hide both the healing and the reason for it. It was slow, terribly slow, weak and damaged as the Child was in both flesh and spirit. She worked frantically, pouring her power into it, until her fear overcame her and she fled, great wings beating frantically into the dark and reeking air.

. . . . .

There was a new thing amid the pain. A chill amid the fire, another voice added to the One that Sang agony always in his mind. There was no kindness in it, or intent of kindness, but where it Sang the other voice was less loud; a little, a very little less. Enough to leave room for something else to grow in the silence between the overlapping Songs. It grew very slowly and with many setbacks, for the space and strength available to it were both tiny. But hour upon hour, day upon day, month upon month, in the unwitting shelter of the new spell of healing and hiding, something came that was not of either the Enemy or His servant.

Words: _Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean, brood of Morgoth or bright Vala, Elda or Maia or Aftercomer, Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth, neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor’s kin, whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth a Silmaril. This swear we all: death we will deal him ere Day’s ending, woe unto world’s end! Our word hear thou, Eru All father! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth. On the holy mountain hear in witness and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda!_

An oath. The Oath, the Oath of Fëanor and the sons of Fëanor, the Oath of Maedhros the son of Fëanor. His Oath. He was Maedhros the son of Fëanor. There was something and someone for him to be besides pain. The words were his and he was theirs. Even the Enemy was not stronger than the Void, the Everlasting Darkness that the Oath brought in its train. The Enemy could not touch the Oath and he was the Oath. . . . . .


	3. Another voice enters

Months passed without incident or rebuke from the Lord. She brooded upon that betraying bit of spell-craft left twined about the Child. The Lord was busy about other things, but he might choose to play with his captive at any time, and then her interference would certainly be discovered. At last on a chill winter’s night she dared to return to the mountain-side. The vents below were busy with fume and vapour; it made a smelly mirk but added an extra layer of concealment against prying eyes, and the steady roar of fouled air blocked ears too. She could hear the Child gasping on its chain, as its tortured lungs struggled for breath in the freezing, filthy wind. She settled herself on the cliff above it, completely out of range of any flailing limb, and searched the spells on it very carefully for her own work.

She found her spell easily, but to her dismay it was...different. It had worked - of course - and there was no trace of the Child’s previous injury. But something had happened to the spell during the passing months. It was grown into the Child’s self, twined deep among both body and spirit in ways that she had never met before; and there was a stink of Doom about it. She remembered Námo the fearsome, the dispassionate destroyer and clicked involuntarily with old fear. But worse than the memory of the Judge was the other thing; behind the Song of the spell, and the Song of the Lord, she could not-hear something else, older than Time and more terrible. The Silence that had been before the Song; that would be when the Song was done. She found herself scuttling sideways along the cliff-face, claws slipping on the frosty stone, wings half-open, ready to fly, away, away. How had this feeble little creature contrived to bind the very Void to itself?

She clawed down the fear - knowledge was her business, after all - and approached the Child again, though not in body. It hung quiescent now, but under her mental touch, delicate though it was, its awareness stirred, expanding like smoke to inhabit its flesh. She could not perceive it directly; no mind, whether Incarnate or spirit, could truly enter another’s, even with that other’s consent. The One kept that prerogative to Itself, denying Its creatures the privacy even of their own hearts. 

The years on the chain should not have left it with more than the bare consciousness of its suffering. But its interior soundscape was so strange now that it startled but did not surprise her when the Child communicated in its own language, or one of them. They had so many, both the Elder Children and the Younger. This was the overSea-Children’s language, not that of Melian’s pets. She seized the thread of her own spell and whispered it about them both, hiding them from the Lord’s Song. 

_What is there?_

_I._

_Who are you? What is your name?_  
.  
That was something of a puzzle. She knew of names. Orcs had them, and the Children. But their _fëar_ were weak, wavering things, needing externals - words, names - to bolster them. She _was_ , and did not need a name to tell her so. She knew who she was, with the unshakeable certainty of self that made one of the Ainur, and so did all those of her order, from the Lord Himself to the least little Orc-formed crawler. In the end she settled for her descriptions among the embodied folk of Angband.

_I am the One Who Hears. The Captain of the Flyers._

There came a sense of uncertainty. The Child’s mind, obviously, was not working well. Impatiently, she sang it the sound-shape of her bodily form - the wide, graceful wings, the sharp talons and fangs of iron, so beautifully sure and swift, the sharp ears that heard all words, the sweet, strong voice that let her always know her place in the world. Satisfyingly, the response was fear. It remembered the Flyers now.

_Bat. Blood-drinking monster._

_It maintains my teeth and claws_ , she explained, uninsulted. Naturally, one of the Children would not be able to appreciate the elegance of the Lord’s shapings. Even Orcs were finely and efficiently designed for their work. Worker-drones that they were, the Lord had not felt the need to waste His strength on mere decorative flourishes. She had no quarrel with this. Form should follow function, after all.

This degree of intellectual activity seemed beyond the Child’s capabilities. It lapsed into its usual semi-conscious stupor. Bored, she flew away.

. . . . .

She stopped by in the Spring to see how it was doing. She was moulting with the warmer weather, and the itch of loosening fur made her restless. The winter had been harsh, but the Lord’s will was harsher, and she had no concern that mere cold and storm might have freed it. Coasting along the warmer airs, she hooked herself to her usual spot, well out of the Child’s reach, and approached it cautiously.

. . . . .

The Other was back. He could no longer truly see with the eyes of the body, but the monstrous image in his mind had been very clear. The memory of that cold, terrible presence (and yet so much less terrible than the ever-present, unending Song that bound him) had been the one different thing that let him distinguish himself from the endless haze of Oath and pain. When he felt its delicate, iron touch upon his mind again, it was as if a sudden chill cooled his anguish by the barest degree, enough for him to be a mind in a body once more, as he had not truly been since they brought him from the depths and hung him here.

_Bat._

_Yes._

_Why are you here?_

 

There was a pause. _To see what is happening to you. And to scratch._ There was a sudden sense of fur loosening and falling away in great hanks as it combed its iron claws through the matted hairs of its winter coat. It was disorienting enough to almost drive him from himself again.

_Bat!_

_What?_

_Stop it! It...I cannot bear ..._

_Weakling._

It flew away, abandoning him. 

The next time it came, he found that he could smell its distinctive, nose-twisting reek, even among the stinking fumes that wreathed the Thangorodrim. He greeted it. It answered.

. . . . .

The Child was becoming disturbingly ...aware. Its conversation, though still rudimentary, was more coherent each time that she returned to it, and its senses were clearly gaining strength, even beneath the weight of the Lord’s Song. 

Roosting among her fellow (lesser!) Flyers, secure behind the impenetrable shield of her body, she worried at the point as Orcs worried at their captives' flesh. The changes to its condition would now be obvious to the least perceptive. The force of the Lord’s spell was undiminished, but its hold on the Child’s _fëa_ was loosening. The Child might choose to die at any point, slip its bonds and be free, and then, inevitably, her actions would be discovered. It took effort to keep her flesh from betraying her fear at the thought. It was a constant, nagging irritation, like a scrap of raw meat caught between her teeth or a tick that would not be dislodged. 

After a while, irritated, she went back to the mountainside and the Child.

. . . . .

Another Spring, another visit. Angband was busy with its own affairs in this season. There was uproar and mayhem in the Orc barracks, which would continue until the survivors established their ascendancy and the right to mate with their pick of the desirable males. In their dens the werewolves snarled over their new pups, and even the rampaging Orcs left them alone. The Balrogs found business elsewhere, Their dignity affronted by the unseemly commotion. The Flyers, too, scattered, sensitive ears aching from the racket. She left the deep roosts with the rest, but paused at the Child’s cliff. It was close to Sunrise, but the permanent overcast about the Thangorodrim was a reliable shelter.

The Child did not complain this time when she combed out her fur and made rude remarks about Orcish habits. It hung on its chain, motionless, but its mind was awake....and listening. She heard a new sound then, and never mind how the Child had managed to hear it before her. A voice singing, with power behind it, of a measure that almost impressed her. Another Elder Child, quite a strong one. And near. Nearer Thangorodrim than any Child had the right to freely be. She sent out her own voice and found it, terribly close by. Even as it fell silent, and she opened her wings ready to fly and sound the alarm, her own Child opened its mouth and replied. The sound it made could not conceivably be called song, but its mind sang, and she winced away from the loss and longing there, even knowing that it had forgotten her, that its song was not against her. 

The other Child was powerful, but it was trapped far below, quite unable to reach this height. She clicked with irritation. Where were the sentries? Was every random crawler now free to gad about unhindered in the Lord’s own lands? But even as she leapt from the cliff, she felt the wind’s warning. Eagles, an Eagle was near. Irritation became rage, and fear. She had the advantage in manoeuverability, but nothing else. She was smaller by far, and it was daylight; once out of the clouds’ shelter she was helpless, and in the Eagle’s presence the very winds became chancy and unreliable. And there It came, treacherous kinsman, stubborn denier of the Lord’s right to rule. It had the other Child on its back, perhaps she could strike from the side or from below while It was hampered....then her voice showed her the Child’s armament and she knew that there was no chance of victory, not alone. She made her decision and dived for the gate, screaming the alarm.

. . . . .

The Child escaped, of course. The chain that had held it was proof against all but the Lord’s own will, but its flesh was not. The Lord took the severed hand that was left. She did not know what He did with it, but the failed sentries (Orcs all; the Wolves were quicker on the uptake, and were galloping for the northern wastes as fast as their paws could carry them even as the Eagle fled with its double burden) replaced the Child on the cliff for a while. The Lord did not bother with them, and her Flyers had them, after a decent interval.

On the whole, she thought, it was as good a result as could have been expected. Her interference was at least now definitively undiscovered. If things were a little quieter, a little less interesting with the Child gone…well, she had many duties, and it was not as if it had been that good a conversationalist anyway.


	4. A New Movement

A new Moon, its light hardly noticeable, and the cold, clean air of early spring. She rode the swift Northern gale joyfully, letting it carry her South across the ramparts of Beleriand (gradually over years of nights she had learned the names that the Children had laid upon this land, their pathetic attempt to divide and distinguish what was essentially indivisible and one). She was peckish, but not hungry enough for it to distract her. This was an ordinary venture and there would be a chance to eat somewhere along the way if she was careful. The pinewoods of Dorthonion were dangerous; its woodsmen kept watch, even in darkness, and it was too easy for an arrow to be loosed unseen from the shelter of the trees. West was yet more perilous, for Melian’s nets were cunning and strong, and might snare even such as she. So South and East it would be, quietly avoiding the Pass of Aglon and its sleepless wardens, and across to the hilly lands beyond (Himlad, they called it). And there ahead would be the pale height of the new fortress, crowned with its spiral walls and reaching tower. 

High above she heard the rhythmic stroking of wings; the spring migration was in full flight, as birds of all kinds left the south for their breeding grounds among the streams and pools of Ard-Galen. She found a thermal and stroked upwards. Skeins of curlews screamed and scattered as she burst upwards among them, fanged jaws and iron talons snatching them out of the air. She caught one and drained it, and flew on, the corpse tucked up in her feet. Amusing though it would be to drop it on some unsuspecting sentry, it would be both unwise and a waste of a snack that she would want later.

She had time. The highlands around the fortress held caves and crevices in plenty, where a Flyer might rest in relative safety during merciless Arien’s bitter ascendancy (they had worked out Who She was eventually, and that cloud-brained Tilion too). On missions yet further south to the mighty, tangled forests of Southern Beleriand, the trees were thick enough to shelter her. Sometimes when the North Wind was strong enough, she might even try her luck crossing the Gelion; not too often, for that Power was Ulmo’s minion and hostile, and the wood-elves that sheltered in Her shadow were as night-eyed as Orcs, and rather better shots. 

Tonight however she would not go much further than the hills east of the Pass. Her task was to spy out the defences of this new fortress that the Children had built, one of several sprouting insolently on the Lord’s very threshold, like so many mushrooms after a night’s rain.

She did not send out her bodily voice. The Elder Children had sharp ears, and the hilly terrain made the winds gusty and unreliable. And away from the Lord’s seat of power, her command of them...was less than it had been, once upon a time. Her true self did not really need the voice anyway; it was an instrument and a vehicle, a pleasing reflection of the deeper reality, but inessential. Long ago, freshly embodied at the Lord’s will, the price of her allegiance, the uses of the flesh had been a joyful novelty, a constant source of learning and delight. But that had been long ago. 

The North Wind swirled her closer. The new fortress had its own presence in the Song, a sound-shape of rage and pain, challenge and defiance; beneath that a watchful, cold-burning determination, steady and chill as the stone on which its outer self was founded. And under it all at the heart of the rock, a hungry darkness, a dim echo of the Void. It sounded almost familiar; almost as if it were one of the Lord’s own outposts. That was interesting, and she let the wind draw her further in to investigate, swinging around the lee of the hill to approach from an unexpected direction.

The Elder Children built their homes with power as well as stone; their voices were small in comparison to those of her kind, but some of them could still be surprisingly strong and distinctive. This one…yes it was familiar. For a startled moment she thought that one of the Children had managed to embody itself in something other than living flesh, in the same way that her kind sometimes could (there was a horned mountain in the East, whose cold voice, hostile to all that lived, had nonetheless helped to guide her home. The Power within had dwelt there since the beginning of things in Arda; It did not acknowledge the Lord, but did not challenge Him either). Then its sound-shape separated from that of the building, and she knew it, both body and Song-presence. A long, thin shape, with the one hand missing, replaced with a metal hook.....

 _Bat!_

The arrows came hard upon that note of recognition, and the treacherous wind had brought her too near; she jinked aside just in time, clawing the air for mastery as she beat hard for the safety of the heights. There were Elder Children below on the ramparts, and on the peak of the tower. The Child’s voice swelled into the air behind her, a spell of calling and command. It was native in flesh, unlike her, and for the barest moment she felt her shaping-cloak actually twitch in response. Astonished and irritated, and since stealth was already lost, she unleashed her own voice, overriding its strength with her own. But more archers were crowding the ramparts, and the spell was changing, trying to bind the wind to bring her back to the fortress and within their range. Caught among voice, arrows and the unchancy airs, she decided to abandon the venture. There would be other nights, and the next time she would know to send the lesser Flyers in first as decoys to draw their shots. She seized the twisting breeze (the airs were _hers_ and no insolent Child was going to wrest them from her), and let it spin her back North, light and swift, towards the fortress and then up and over, so that their own piled stone would conveniently impede the archers’ aim.

As a parting gesture she dropped the dead curlew as she went, and was pleased to see it score a direct hit on one of the archers.


	5. Counterpoint (Voice 1)

She would never have admitted it, but she disliked the scouting flights over Gelion, and its seven tributaries. Necessary, to be sure. Someone had to keep ears open for happenings in the Eastern accesses, and the comings and goings along the road built by those treacherous little digger-things under the Blue Mountains. There was no doubt that the Flyers were the only scouts capable of bypassing the hostile waters. It was an honour, really.

But it was also dangerous, especially in summer. Beneath the impenetrable layers of the tree cover lurked Elder Children of a different sort from the flame-eyed riders of the high, bare hills. The forest folk were sly and secretive, lurking in ambush under the concealing thickness of the canopy. Their voices slithered and insinuated, disguising their presence and evil intent against her sensitive ears. Even in winter they wrapped the shadow of song around themselves, and went fireless and unnoticed by even the most alert and sharp-eared Flyer. It was not true shadow, the stuff they used, not the proper shadow of the Lord. There was no comfort or safety in it; their songs had nasty echoes of the Dreamlord’s power in them, they tangled and confused and misdirected, until sometimes an unwary Flyer was disoriented enough to come down within arrow-reach. And the stone-tipped arrows very rarely missed. 

The Rivers and the Children were not the only enemy; the trees themselves were no friends, either. Their netted leaves sheltered the enemy, their massive, mossy boughs were the highways across the land, paths that neither Orc nor Wolf could follow. A Flyer might track from above; but the Green Children’s arrows, though primitive in style, carried power with them, far more power than the dirty savages should have been able to dispose of. They had the favour of the river and Her master, the deadly Lord of Waters whom all Flyers feared; and the Earthqueen was with them too, Lady Life-and-Death, treacherous and ruthless, a Power of Whom even the Lord was wary (though that thought would never be voiced in His hearing). Sometimes, coasting through the night air as quietly as she could, she would hear the Lady’s cool laughter, threading among the whispering song of the leaves like a werewolf’s venom in the veins of its prey. 

The Lord would deal with them of course, one day, when the time came for Him to abandon His petty games of orcs and armies, and arise once more in might, When he would blaze forth in His glory out of the shadows of Angband, when the heights would roar with fire, and the hills fall, and all rivers die that did not yield to His will. 

But until then all these dangers made the Gelion duty an excellent way for her to test each new generation of pups; the Forest Children could be trusted to eliminate all weaklings. The last few broods, however, had been unusually disappointing, for some reason. Or perhaps the Forest Children had become deadlier, which was quite possible. They were, after all, now allied with the Lord of Mount Rerir in the north, one of the Western Children, and exceptionally powerful among them. The little tunnel-rats in their nests under the Blue Mountains had been more active lately too, and the Lord had said that some of the Younger Children were coming west, answering His call to enter His service. So scouting across the Gelion was both unavoidable and a higher priority that it had been a mere hundred years before. 

She had lost enough junior scouts recently to concede that the job needed someone of more power and experience than the younger roosts could supply. And to maintain her leadership among them…she had to lead. Being neither careless nor complacent, she took the time to scout out her lines of retreat, both directly north-west to home, and west into the tangled wilderness of the southern forest. A land empty of permanent inhabitants and therefore a safer refuge for a lone scout waiting out the deadly light of day.

So when her luck ran out and the winds betrayed her, a sudden downdraft driving her low _too low!_ and into the flight of the waiting arrows, she had at least a plan to follow, for what good it did her. She kept enough hold on the airs that the arrows did not kill her instantly. Most, indeed, missed. But she would have died in any case from the ones that struck true, had she been any less than she was. Screaming her agony and rage, she fought the wind and forced it to bear her. Even with one wing useless the tempest of her fury blew her back across Gelion’s spring flood, until her strength failed and it wrenched itself free, and flung her crashing to ground deep beneath the shrouding canopy of the southern forest. She had not managed to sustain the storm long enough reach the sheltering caves of the Andram. But even before the full leaf of summer the twiggy, intertwined branches were thick enough to leave the forest floor in dimness. Arien’s bitter fire would still hurt, but Her light was still weak in spring, and in normal times she would be able to endure well enough. Wounded as she was now, though,…

Desperate, she sent her voice out, seeking whatever shelter there might be, and found a tangled thicket halfway up a shallow slope not too far away, grown up and around a tumble of great boulders left over from the glaciers’ retreat from Beleriand long ago; one of the old battles of the Spring of Arda. A little freshet bubbled from among them; the Lord of Waters was an enemy, but her body needed water, if blood was not available. With torn flesh and only one wing usable, sinking her iron claws deep in mud and leafmould, she dragged herself slowly upwards, to a cleft that would, hopefully, be enough to hide her from the deadly Sun. She was still bleeding, both from the original injuries and from the hurts of the long, brutal fall through tangled branches to the unforgiving earth. A beacon for any predator with a nose for the trail…Well. Let them come. Their blood would feed her healing.


End file.
